Forty Years Of The Coordinating Committee For Geoscience - CCOP

alongside the best of all the regional projects supported by the UNDP”. Accordingly they
recommended that support be extended until 1979. A new project document (Phase 2, 1974-79)
was signed (Figures 5 and 6) which committed the signatory countries to provide cash
contributions to the UNDP project as specified in the document. Because Japan, being a
developed country, was not a signatory to the original project document, the Government of
Japan would make its contributions through a separate account of ECAFE with the money being
“at the disposal of the (UNDP) Project Manager for the work of CCOP”. By 1975 a draft
proposal for a further extension to 1981 had been prepared with the justification for expanding
and extending the project stated in the following words,
“New impetus and direction to offshore prospecting in East Asia is evidenced by gradual
strengthening of the capabilities of the developing member countries to carry out their
offshore survey programmes and by recent oil discoveries and intensified exploration
efforts. More staff, resources and funds are being provided by the countries for this purpose.
New areas of work have been defined and initiated such as development of offshore tin
deposits, investigations of all types of offshore solid minerals, application of satellite remote
sensing to marine environmental studies, investigation of mineral resources beyond the
continental shelves, a new phase of Project Magnet (1974 to 1979), establishment of
national offshore data storage/retrieval centres and compilation of maps and geological
syntheses of petroliferous basins.
The project has brought about effective co-operation among the developing member
countries, demonstrated the economy and efficiency of pooled efforts in surveying large
regions, and introduced and executed fellowships and personnel exchanges within the
region.
In order to continue to undertake their increasingly complex tasks, the developing member
countries of CCOP need additional specialised advisory and consultancy services and
education of their personnel in new fields of work and new techniques through increased
formal training as well as through seminars and/or working groups.”
Having stressed the proposed main mode of operation in the final paragraph of the justification,
above, the proposal went on to outline both the immediate and the longer term objectives of the
extended project. While the former stressed the further investigation and assessment of
hydrocarbon resources beneath the marine shelves, the latter referred to offshore mineral
resources in general and to augmenting the capabilities of the developing member countries of
CCOP to carry out their own offshore surveys. With considerable foresight these long-term
objectives also included the recognition that the development and management of their marine
resources by the member countries had to be carried out “with proper consideration for rational,
optimal uses of all types of marine resources and seafloor space, and the preservation of the
marine environment and the coastal zone”. This look to the future correctly anticipated the
environmental pressures that would increasingly come to shape the CCOP programme over the
next thirty years.
In 1977, Dr C Y Li resigned from his post as Project Manager/Co-ordinator of the UNDP project
after successfully guiding it through its first five years of operation. Also in 1977 a revised
project document had been drawn up requesting UNDP support for a further four years from
1978 to 1982. The indicated budget was just over $11m. This comprised contributions in cash
($300,000) and in kind (valued at $4m) from participating Member Countries, a UNDP
contribution ($3m) which was partly covered by a special donation from the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to UNDP, and contributions by the Cooperating
Countries in cash and in kind (valued at $4m). Ten Member Countries were named in the
proposal, excluding Japan as explained above. The project proposal was accepted.
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A World of Difference